How to Have Pro-Level Hard Wired Serena by Lutron Smart Shades

smart window coverings have become our favorite smart home product we love how they can automatically open and close each day or how with the Press of a button I can set them to a preset level to give us some shade from the Sun and make the room a lot more comfortable to be in now in our previous home we were using battery powered Shades from Serena by Lutron now the great part about these Shades is their battery would last two to four years but in this new home we have a lot more windows and some of them in a lot harder to reach places so we decided to go with a wired Smart Shade solution now with this we're going to have a very professional look we're going to have less maintenance as well as a fully integrated system into the home well the good news is we didn't have to look far as Serena shades by Lutron offer a wired solution thanks to Lutron for sponsoring today's video as I'm going to show you exactly how I was able to get all the shades in my home pre-wired so that I could have them fully integrated into the home so let's go ahead and jump back to where this all started to to show you how this was done now back when the home was just framed we had the opportunity to walk through with the electricians to add any extra electrical work and we knew that we wanted to add these wired Shades so first we had to decide which Windows these were going to go in we ended up deciding to go in pretty much all the windows except for a few smaller ones that we didn't think it was going to be needed there the next step is to figure out which wire we need to use as well as where the wire needs to be placed in the window so if you look at the Serena roller Shades product detail page here it talks all about the shade scroll down you'll pass the battery options plug-in power supply and then you'll reach the power panel so here it says that there can be 10 windows for one power panel and then this tiny little asterisk down here says secondary wiring must be a type cl2 cl2p cl2r cl2x or other cable with equivalent or better electrical mechanical and flammability ratings in accordance with local electrical code so that helped me get a little bit closer but it still wasn't clear so I ended up calling Serena by Lutron customer service to find out a few more details and they were able to give me the exact information that I needed to know they said that the wire that is used is a two wire 16 gauge wire that gauge is able to push enough power to the shades for them to operate they also told me that you should have the wire come in to the left side of the window once it is Sheetrock as that is where the motor and the wire is going to be on all of the different shades whether you go with the Serena Shades the honeycomb or even the wood blinds that is where you're going to have the wire that needs to be wired in so next we need to know a little bit more about the power panel I did find out that you need to call Serena Shades and have them add the power panel to your cart for your order you you cannot just simply find it and add it to the cart and that's because the power panel needs to be wired into a high powered system 120 volts and it converts it down to 12 volts and they want to make sure that you're not going to wire your shade into 120 volts as that would break them so I like how you need to call them and then you order the power panel they put it on your order and then you can go through and start ordering the shades you want and for the power panel you will need to hire a pro to have somebody come and have that installed properly so that you can get everything working great but one more thing I did find about the power panel if we scroll all the way down to the bottom here we can see Power panel wiring guide so here if you have a run of 200 feet you would need 16 gauge wire 120 feet could be 18 and 75 feet could be 20. now I like the idea of using just the 16 gauge for all the windows so that there was enough power going to each of the windows so let's take a look at one of the windows here and how it is wired so here we have the wire coming into the top left of the window here they use cl3r wire which is a two wire 16 gauge and then make sure they leave enough length here so it's easy to wire the window here the wire comes down all the way through the floor all the way down to the basement and then here it runs all the way down to my mechanical room where all of the different wires are dropped and because we are doing 18 windows I will need two different power panels so here we have the two rows for the two different power panels so now we already have a ton of info about how these are going to be wired properly now let's talk about the next steps which are to patiently wait until the drywallers come in the painters and everyone has come in and completed the home now when all is said and done this is the final result here so here the wire is coming in to the window and it comes all all the way across more than half which gives plenty of room you only really need a little bit but I would say get as much as you can here you know maybe half the distance or more or the full distance of the window to have that wiring now one more question I had that I couldn't actually answer until I installed my shades or wood blinds was where this wire should actually come in now here is my recommendation if you are using roller Shades I liked it right here so if it came in right at the side I could actually put this through into the shade and have it wired right there and there were no problems if you are doing wood blinds I would actually recommend having it either back a little further so that it doesn't get in the way of the bracket or have it come out just a little bit right there so that it doesn't hit the bracket and that's not all in the way and then you can have it wired there if you want to be that specific you can but I think just coming in anywhere over on this side worked really well so now that the windows are completely finished and all the trim is in we are ready to order our Serena Shades so let me walk you through some of the things you need to click on while you are ordering your Shades so here on the Serena Shades website we're going to go to design and buy and here you can choose between honeycomb wood blinds or roller Shades I'm going to talk about all these in a different video we'll just choose roller for this demo next we're going to measure our window so you're going to measure the top middle and the bottom and you're going to choose the smallest dimension of those three so for this window let's go ahead and choose that we had a 45 width and a half an inch now we're going to measure the height so you're going to measure the left the right and the middle and then we're going to choose the largest Dimension so let's go ahead and choose 70. so here on the next page you have the option to choose if you want battery repowered but here we have the wired option so here we're at the wired it comes with a 15 foot long 12 volt cord and then it does have the RF technology built in so it will work with the caseta Smart Hub but then down here it says without the plug-in adapter a licensed electrician is needed to install a Lutron power panel please call for more information so if you haven't yet you would call Serena Shades here and you can then have them add the power panel to your cart and then if you don't have a pre-wired home you do have the option to add the power adapter to your cart so that you can then plug this in and have your Shades be wired so we're going to choose next and here I have inside mounted windows we choose the fascia and then last you're going to choose the style of Shades here they're sheer translucent or blackout I'm going to go with the translucent for this video and then you have a lot of different options that you can choose from here for the fabric we went with the Mirage less than one percent collection and the cotton so now that we have all that you now get to select how you're going to control these so you can use just one Pico remote to control up to 10 different shades here you can get the caseta Smart Hub which is able to control up to 75 different devices and here you can get a bundle with them together so I already have my Hub set up but let's go ahead and choose remote control I'm going to choose a Pico remote because this allows me to have one of these for each of my rooms so that I can easily control them and anyone in the house can easily control them and then here under accessories and remotes I also like to add a Pico wall box adapter this allows me to place that Pico remote on the wall and make it look just like light switch that has always been there you can also get a wall plate if you're going to do it all by itself which will look really nice and here we have the 10 output power panel again it's notifying you you need to call all in to get them to add it to your cart and down here there is one more remote that is for group remote control I'll talk about that in another video as well but if you have a lot of Shades in one room this might be a great option for you so next we're going to add a shade location and this is really helpful for when the shades arrive so you can know exactly which window this goes to and then we're going to add to the cart now I'm going to go through and measure the rest of the windows in my home and add all of my shades I'm going to double or maybe even triple measure just to make sure I have everything right so that once it arrives I can get them installed without any problems so let's go ahead and send in my order now that our Serena Shades wall adapters as well as Peak remotes have arrived it's time to get them installed now when you are looking for which shade goes to which room the first thing you'll notice is the different sizes the second thing is on the side by the label you will see the actual room name so let's go ahead get these installed let's start with this one right here now let me know if you want a more detailed version of the installation but here we have a bracket we have some screws and then we have the roller shade as well as the fascia here I'm going to take the bracket I'm going to Mark a few places where I'm going to drill a hole drill the holes peel off this protective tape on the back hold up the roller shade to kind of plan where I want this to end up so I know where I need to mount the bracket so I end up putting the bracket about an inch and a half back from the front of the window next I'm going to detach the fascia and now snap in the roller shade into place now make sure that you put the wire air in front of the shades it's much easier when you do that and then it makes it accessible to have everything wired now let's move on to the wood blinds so this is pretty simple you have these brackets that you'll need to put up and then you'll attach the wood blinds to it now for the wire here it actually comes detached and you'll just need to plug it in the motor here and then again I like to hang it over the front so it's easy to access when they are being wired once the brackets are installed you'll install the wood blinds make sure that Middle Screw is off to the right or left don't put it in the direct middle or it will hit your bracket and then here we're going to install the valance and now they are ready to be wired and I really like the manual operation on these you can easily pull them down and push them up as they have a pulley system that makes them super easy to use once all my shades and blinds have been put up the next step is to get them all connected through the power and here is the Lutron power panel I think this thing looks pretty awesome does come with a set of instructions but I am no Pro we're going to turn this over to an electrician to get these installed so this will be tying in to the 120 volt system and then this is going to convert the signal to 12 volts and then we're going to wire 10 different shades up to this and then we'll have a second panel to wire the rest so let's go ahead have him open this up and get it set up foreign looks good so after he spent some time getting the power panels installed he then wired in each of the 16 gauge wire into the panels spreading them out and here is the final look and I think these just look awesome now that I have the shade installed I'm ready to have the electrician wire this end as well now this part was pretty simple he did have the power off he spliced the two red wires together and the two black wires together and then we turned on the circuit to power the two power panels and now we're ready to get them connected to the caseta Smart Hub The Hub allows us to connect them through the Lutron app so that we can then create different schedules as well as connect them with Siri Google assistant or Amazon Alexa so first we're going to head into the Lutron app tap the settings and add device and then we need to choose shade slash blinds so here you can choose which option you're comparing and when we choose roller shade it then tells us we need to hold down the button for 10 seconds on the roller shade once it is recognized by The caseta Hub it will then ask what room you want it paired into you and what you want to name the shade now that we have our shade installed we can control it right from the app but I like to use a peak remote to be able to control the shade and put this wherever I want in the room so to pair the Pico remote we're going to go into Lutron app go to the settings add a device Peak remote and then we're going to hold down on the pic remote off button for 10 seconds once we do that and the app has recognized it we're then going to add it to the location give it a name and then it is ready to go so here for this Pico remote I have added it into our bedroom and now it is going to be able to control both of the roller Shades in this room so let's go ahead press the down button and those are working fully wired into the home and I'm surprised how silent they actually are and how quickly they are closing now at any time I can push one of the little arrows here so the up Arrow will allow me to slowly open it to a certain level or I can push the down arrow to change that as well and then here on the Pico remote we have the little middle button here so what you can do is set a favorite button so to set that favorite we're going to put the shades where we want them so let's do half and then we're going to hold down the button for 10 seconds and then once it flashes it has then been paired all right now it is paired so let's say we have them fully open now at any time if I want to go to that favorite button I simply push the middle button it will then close them to our favorite position and then we're good to go now if I want to close them I can then simply push the off button and they will fully close so now let's go ahead and go through the rest of the home and get them connected and here we're going to do the same for the wood blinds first we'll connect the wood blind to the Lutron app and then we'll connect the Pico and the pairing process with these and the honeycomb shades are a little different you wait until the green light is flashing hold down for 10 seconds and then it will pair to the app now we have automatic blinds now a great way to mount the Pico remote is the wall plate bracket so here I'm going to pop out this little plastic piece I'm going to add the Pico remote onto it and then I picked up a new face plate that is four gang but it has one Decora and three toggles so it kind of fits right in the home and it's there for anyone to use and I won't lose the Pico remote the next step is to adjust the upper limit and the lower limit this allows you to close or open the shade exactly where you want it to be because there is a little bit of extra length there this allows us to fix that so it's not going too long or Too Short we're going to start by heading into the Lutron app and going to the shade to make these adjustments so here we have the bottom left shade and you can see that there is a little bit of the shade that we can see so if we tap edit device and then we go to set shade limits we then can adjust the open limit so here if we tap up it will then close that a little bit we could try a little bit more so that it allows the full light to come in and that looks great so we're going to select save so now for the close limit I'm going to close the shade so here you see when the shade closes it closes too far so it makes the shade kind of bend a little bit so we want to fix that so we're going to hit edit device set shade limits and here we're going to adjust the close limit so I'm going to open this a little bit until the shade is barely touching the windowsill so there it is without touching the seal at all let's just do one more where it is touching and I like how that looks so we're going to go ahead and save that but now that we have this set let's go ahead and open it a little bit and now let's close it and there you can see it stops exactly where I want it to as well as opens exactly where I want it to and after all that hard work it's time to enjoy the final results [Music] so after months of waiting and a bit of work getting them installed wired and set up to the caseta Smart Hub we now have our fully integrated wired Serena smart Shades now let me go ahead and show you the final product by first pressing the favorite button now I love how I can set a preset button and have certain ones be fully open or some closed this is great so the little guy doesn't come over here and mess with the shade so that's really awesome now to be able to do different levels you just need to go into the Lutron app set them all to exactly where you want and then hold down the button on the peak remote so you can have that preset saved now I also love how the translucent fabric allows for plenty of light to be in the room with blocking the full brightness of the sun it works really really well and then even with all the roller Shades operating you could barely hear that they were making any sound and I love how quickly they moved so now I can simply press up it will then raise them all so that we can have the full brightness of the Sun and be able to see outside and it all works so well now if you have the chance to pre-wire your new home for Serena smart Shades and the power panel I can 100 recommend you do this I love having this fully integrated system into my home that looks very professional and is going to have very low maintenance for many many years now if you have any further questions about this process please let me know in the comments below and if you would like to see the different options that Serena Shades offers you can check out the videos here and you can see how you can integrate caseta Smart Hub into all of your lighting here thank you so much for watching we'll see on the next one

Channel: Tech With Brett

Views: 40,185

Keywords: Tech With Brett, Hard wire serena shades, Lutron Smart Shades Power Panel, Wiring Serena Shades, Lutron Smart Roller Shades, Lutron Smart Wood Blinds, Serena Shades Order, Serena Shades Install, Smart Home Window Coverings, New Home Build Smart Shades, Pre-wiring Serena by Lutron, pre wire smart shades

Id: O9G7SW3n1wY

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022